my baby lives in shades of blue
by aimlessly
Summary: She loves him as she did when she was fifteen, all coy smiles and knocking their knees together under the piano. AustinAlly.


_my baby lives in shades of blue_

**notes: because i love these two so much it hurts, and i love future fic, and i love slightly darker takes on disney couples and most of all i love the light of my life, fire of my loins, miss lana del rey. her hauntingly beautiful song 'shades of cool' inspired this here fic and i highly recommend listening to the song as you read; not required, just suggested. ****that's it, i think. enjoy, loves. x**

**/**

She's twenty seven and her life is nothing like what she'd imagined it'd be.

It's funny, how time flies - it feels like just yesterday she was fifteen, dark hair always getting in her face, hiding behind her songbook from prying eyes. Sixteen, crawling skeptically out of her shell and into a world of camera flashes and roaring crowds. Seventeen, living the life she'd always wanted, Austin's hand always in hers, blood coursing through her veins and smoke in her eyes.

She's twenty seven now and her life is nothing what she'd imagined it'd be - she's a waitress, quietly wading her way through throngs of hormonal teenagers and agitated toddlers and catcalling men twice her age - but she has Austin Moon, and that's more than she's ever thought she could say.

Somehow, it is enough.

/

They aren't broken, not really - they are a mess of a patchwork quilt that's been torn apart at the seams and restitched so many times it resembles something that you keep in the deepest, darkest corners of your closet, where the monsters thrive.

Ally can't decide which is worse.

/

Austin is out most days - still getting some work, he tells her with a grin and a wink. She always laughs and it always comes out pained and sad. Austin pretends not to notice. Ally pretends he isn't lying, that he isn't going to come drunk tonight.

There are shinier, newer faces arriving in Hollywood by the truckload, faces neither of them recognize splashed across the covers of magazines and the name_ Austin Moon_ is getting thrown around less and less.

It is the inevitable, really, but they still don't talk about it - when E! News announces their next guest, a green-eyed boy with dark hair falling into his eyes, as the _new Austin Moon _Ally can just feel him tensing up and merely squeezes his hand under the table and smiles sadly at him.

It's okay, though, because she loves him, and that is enough.

Or, at least, that's what she likes to think.

/

It's strange, when Austin gets like this - all quiet and contemplative and mopey and she has to remind him with a kiss on the cheek that _no teen heartthrob lasts forever._

Ally wants so desperately to be enough, for him to be okay with being stripped of his fame and money and left with just her in the end. But she knows him better than that, and she knows he will always be reaching for the moon even after it's sunk behind the horizon to make way for a new day.

/

Two weeks, three days, six hours, twenty seven minutes and forty eight seconds after Ally's official twenty seventh birthday, her father dies.

It is entirely unexpected - she sees him not three days before, standing behind the register of Sonic Boom, smiling and laughing with her as he wipes down the counters. He isn't as young as he used to be, but he's not _old_, not by any stretch of the imagination. Not old enough for Ally to even have to worry about losing him.

She gets the call just as she's getting off from a particularly long shift at the restaurant. It's an unknown number, and she usually doesn't answer those, but this time she does.

"Allison Moon, daughter of Lester Dawson?" The voice on the other end of the line is calculated and deadpan, and Ally purses her lips in uncertainty.

"Yes?"

"Your father is in the hospital."

Ally's heart clenches and she can barely think or hear or see, panic rising up and choking her. This can't be right. Her father is healthy.

She doesn't remember much after that, just hospital employees speaking complex medical jargon she doesn't understand as she nods her head, dazed. Collapsed at work. Unconscious. Sudden cardiac death. No previous health conditions? Very, very sorry. _There is nothing we could do._

They can be sorry all they want, but healthy people are not supposed to die at fifty two years old. Ally knows this.

She spends the next two weeks in bed under the covers and she is sure she's never spent quite so much time thinking about death.

Sonic Boom belongs to her now and the thought of having to dig through years of her father's things in the storage closets and stuffed behind the counter, all abandoned in the blink of an eye without warning makes her heart ache. It is a time capsule she'd really rather not open.

She wants to sell the place; let the banks take possession of it, she thinks, let them destroy the years of paperwork and receipts and memories it contains with a careless swipe, but somehow that feels wrong, too. Besides the store, Ally is the only thing left behind in her father's absence.

The store sits abandoned for several weeks, and Ally remains curled under the sheets and Austin is away from home more and more, coming home later and later. The bank calls - once, twice, three times and then several times more. Ally never answers.

One morning, Austin crawls under the covers with her and for once Ally can't detect the smell of cheap beer and smoke. "Come with me," he murmurs, hands snaking around her waist. "I have a surprise."

Ally would really rather not. "That's alright," she says quietly, curling in tighter on herself.

"Come on, Als," he persists, crawling over her so he can look her in the eyes. Ally blinks. Austin isn't usually very persistent - not anymore, anyway - and the use of his old nickname for her leaves her reeling, so. She says okay.

Thirty minutes later and they're in his car, and Ally knows from the second she gets in where they're going. "Austin, please. I can't do this, I app-"

"Just trust me. Please. I promise you can trust me."

The store, from the outside, looks just as it did before her father died. It's only been a month but it feels like she's been away for ages, likes she's coming home for the first time after being away for a lifetime, Ally thinks bitterly, tears threatening to spring to her eyes.

And then Austin is pushing open the doors and guiding her gently inside and - oh.

It's clean. Not completely stripped bare; the old piano still sits, rising up from the floor almost proudly without a speck of dust adorning its surface. The wall still holds all her father's old records, all glinting in the thin streams of light coming in through the blinds.

The entire floor is covered with plastic, though, and a cluster of paint cans sits in the center of the room.

"I know you didn't want to sell it," Austin murmurs, chin resting atop her head. "I thought, maybe, you know, we could spruce the place up a little bit. We both need a distraction - you from, well, you know...and me from the horrid, gut-wrenching reality that my rock star career is spiraling down the drain. Oh, my career, how will I go on?" He drapes a hand over his eyes dramatically, but when he peeks at Ally he is smiling gently, eyes hopeful.

"I'm surprised you didn't arrange the paint cans in the shape of a heart," Ally says, choking on something that's both a sob and a laugh.

"Do you want me to?" And there it is, his stupid goofy grin. In that sense, he has remained the same.

Her mouth opens and closes several times, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes and trickling down her cheeks; she doesn't know what to say, so instead she kisses him so hard she sees stars.

/

That's the thing, though - Austin does things like this sometimes and Ally loves him, she does. She'll always love him.

It's just, well. It's hard, because he does things like this and they have to pretend that tomorrow night he won't be gone again, drinking himself into oblivion and smiling through his hangover the next morning. They'll fight and she'll scream at him that she's _worried_, that she doesn't want him to pretend to be okay when he's not. Then Austin will tell her he doesn't have a drinking problem, that he's okay with the celebrity part of his life being nearly over, that he can deal with it and Ally will smile through her tears and pretend to believe him and that everything is Just Fine.

And it starts all over again in the morning.

/

On Sundays, she makes him pancakes and they eat together in silence, legs knocking together under the table like two grade schoolers playing footsie. It feels familiar.

From across the table, he looks at her with love - the purest of love.

/

For their anniversary he takes her to a tiny old bar in what is, with god as her witness, probably the grungiest part of Florida Ally has ever experienced.

She has the most fun she's had in ages.

There's this old jukebox in the corner that they feed quarters into until they have to ask the bartender to exchange their cash for more. She feels warm and bubbly and happy, veins pulsing with alcohol and adrenaline. They dance and they're both terrible, swaying and giggling like they're children again in the dim yellow lighting.

He plays Glory Days by Bruce Springsteen and Ally wants to chide him for dwelling on his washed-up career woes but then he's laughing, grabbing her hand and they're singing along. "_Glory days, well, they'll pass you by! Glory days, in the wink of a young girl's eye_!"

She's laughing breathlessly, throwing her head back and Austin is too while he rocks her in his arms, spins her around and pulls her back. He always pulls her back. Always.

It's not a Hollywood party, not like the ones they used to go to in spades; Ally doesn't go home holding her heels in her hand with streamers caught in her hair, but somehow, she thinks she likes this just as much.

They don't go home at all after, actually; he takes her to a hotel just a few blocks down the road (that's all they can manage - they're both practically gagging for it and his hand is rest high up on her thigh she kind of just wants him to fuck her in the backseat right now.)

She chants his name over and over again when he presses her into the hotel mattress, tilting her head back, mind reeling. He's saying _I love you I love you I love you _like they're running out of time. _You are my entire world._

Austin isn't always honest, but when she looks him in the eyes, Ally knows he isn't lying.

/

Things really aren't Just Fine and both of them know it. Neither of them say it out loud.

He's quieter now than he was when they were kids, eyes less alive with feverish excitement, and when she's extra close she can see the beginnings of wrinkles forming by his eyes, but it's still _Austin_ and Ally loves him the same as she did when they were two stupid teenagers high off the lights and crowds and noise.

She loves him as she did when she was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, all shining eyes and coy smiles and knocking their knees together under the piano. She loves him as she did when she was eighteen, nineteen, twenty, Hollywood parties and heads buzzing and warm fingers brushing heated skin.

Ally will always love him, and she tells him so when her head in his lap while he rests on the couch, and when they're both panting and gasping and whispering each other's names in the dark, and when they're in his car with the top down, wind blowing their hair back, fingers twined together.

She can only hope that for Austin, it is enough.


End file.
